tree that any schoolboy would have climbed. Yes,
that's the sort of thing that has haunted us all
about him, the thing we could never fit a word to.
Whether he is my old schoolfellow or no, at least
he is all my old schoolfellows. He is the endless
bun-eating, ball-throwing animal that we have all
been.

Innocent has an idea about every few minutes, but so far as the book is
concerned we need mention only one of them. That one is--local autonomy
for Beacon House. This may be recommended as a game to be played _en
famille_. Establish a High Court, call in a legal member, and get a
constitution. The rest will be very hilarious. The legal member of the
Beacon House _menage_ is an Irish ex-barrister, one Michael Moon, who
plans as follows:

The High Court of Beacon, he declared, was a
splendid example of our free and sensible
constitution. It had been founded by King John in
defiance of Magna Carta, and now held absolute
power over windmills, wine and spirit licences,
ladies travelling in Turkey, revision of sentences
for dog-stealing and parricide, as well as
anything whatever that happened in the town of
Market Bosworth. The whole hundred and nine
seneschals of the High Court of Beacon met about
once in every four centuries; but in the intervals
(as Mr. Moon explained) the whole powers of the
institution were vested in Mrs. Duke [the
landlady]. Tossed about among the rest of the
company, however, the High Court did not retain
its historical and legal seriousness, but was used
somewhat unscrupulously in a riot of domestic
detail. If somebody spilt the Worcester Sauce on
the tablecloth, he was quite sure it was a rite
without which the sittings and findings of the
Court would be invalid; and if somebody wanted a
window to remain shut, he would suddenly remember
that none but the third son of the lord of the
manor of Penge had the right to open it. They even
went the length of making arrests and conducting
criminal inquiries.

Before this tribunal Innocent Smith is brought. One alienist is an
American, who is quite prepared to acknowledge its jurisdiction, being
by reason of his nationality not easily d